Saint George and the Dragon

Price Realised USD 125,000

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USD 100,000 - USD 150,000

Closed: 19 Jun 2020

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Antwerp School, circa 1520

Saint George and the Dragon

Price Realised USD 125,000

Closed: 19 Jun 2020

Price Realised USD 125,000

Closed: 19 Jun 2020

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

Antwerp School, circa 1520
Saint George and the Dragon
oil on panel
15⁷⁄₈ x 13 in. (40.4 x 32.9 cm.)

Thomas Jefferson Bryan (1800-1870), Philadelphia and Boston, as Albrecht Dürer, and by whom gifted in 1867 to
New-York Historical Society, New York, and by whom sold
From the Collection of Thomas J. Bryan, The Property of the New-York Historical Society; Sotheby's, New York, 9 October 1980, lot 46, as 'Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse', where acquired by a close relative of the following
[Property from a Private Collection]; Sotheby's, London, 10 July 2008, lot 110, where acquired by the present owner.

R.G. White, Companion to The Bryan Gallery of Christian Art from the Earliest Masters to the Present Time, New York, 1853, p. 97, no. 162, as 'Albert Dürer'.
Catalogue of the Museum and Gallery of Art of the New York Historical Society, New York, 1887 and 1893, p. 42, no. 375, as ‘Albert Dürer’.
Catalogue of the Gallery of Art of The New York Historical Society, New York, 1915, p. 81, no. B-199, as 'Albert Dürer'.
M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei: Jan Gossart und Bernart van Orley, VIII, Berlin, 1934, p. 154, no. 21, as Jan Gossaert and datable to circa 1507.
J. Held, 'Dutch and Flemish Primitives in the Historical Society of New York', Art in America, XXIII, December 1934, p. 13, as 'Attributed to the Master of the Antwerp Adoration'.
G. Glück, 'Mabuse and the Development of the Flemish Renaissance', The Art Quarterly, VIII, 1945, p. 124, fig. 7, as Jan Gossaert.
G. von der Osten, 'Studien zu Jan Gossaert', in De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, M. Meiss, ed., New York, 1961, p. 462, as Jan Gossaert.
F. Winkler, 'Aus der ersten Schaffenzeit des Jan Gossart', Pantheon, XX, 1962, pp. 150-151, 153, pl. 7, as Jan Gossaert.
S.J. Herzog, Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse (ca. 1478-1532): A Study of His Chronology with a Catalogue of His Works, Ph.D. dissertation, 1969, p. 363, no. 83, as by a painter in the circle of Jan van Riller and having 'little or nothing to do with Gossaert'.
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting: Jan Gossart and Bernart van Orley, VIII, New York and Washington, 1972, pp. 22-23, and p. 93, no. 21, pl. 25, as Jan Gossaert and datable to circa 1507.

Grand-Hornu, Musée des arts contemporains, La gloire de saint Georges: l'homme, le dragon et la mort, 18 October 2015-17 January 2016, no. 44.

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Lot Essay

The story of Saint George slaying the dragon was popularized by the medieval chronicler Jacobus de Voragine in his . The story recounts how Saint George, a Roman soldier of Christian faith, saved the daughter of a pagan king by subduing a dragon with his lance. The princess then led the dragon to the city, where the saint killed it with his sword. In recognition of the service Saint George paid them, the king and his subjects converted to Christianity.
Despite its evident quality and a monumentality that belies its small scale, this painting has thus far evaded definitive attribution. The painting is first documented in the collection of Thomas Jefferson Bryan, one of the first serious collectors of old master paintings in America. There, it bore an attribution to Albrecht Dürer on account of a spurious Dürer monogram, removed during a cleaning undertaken after the 1980 sale, on the rock immediately to the right of the horse’s rearing front legs. Bryan, who opened the Gallery of Christian Art in New York City in 1852, subsequently donated his collection to the New York Historical Society in 1867.
The painting retained its traditional attribution to Dürer until 1934, when Max Friedländer published it instead as a work by Jan Gossaert in his seminal, multi-volume , and dated it to 1507(). The attribution was generally upheld in the scholarly literature in succeeding decades, save a publication by Julius Held, who attributed the painting to the Master of the Antwerp Adoration (). In more recent decades, scholars have come to see this compelling image as the work of an anonymous artist active in the first few decades of the sixteenth century in Antwerp. On account of the distinctive rock formations, which rely on the work of Joachim Patinir, the painting almost assuredly dates to after 1515, the year in which Patinir became a master in Antwerp's painters guild.